Hi Everyone, Totally new to MLR and been in writing hiatus for quite some time due to illness.

I have since come back and am no trying to get everything in order. I have just registered all my music with PRS. Last month I received a small payment via PRS from ASCAP (I hadn’t even submitted the track to PRS) for a TV show and that got me thinking, what else is out there.

I have a TuneSat account which has a bunch of detections, my question is, can I get paid for these?

Most of them are adverts between the shows. Usage time ranges from 0:04 – 1:13. Around 1800 detections. Usage total across detections is 376659 ‘uses’. Total time detected works out to be around 15hrs of content.

As I said, I’ve been away for a while, and I am totally out of the loop! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Since you’re with PRS, I think your first hurdle would be for the PRO of whichever country those uses are in to account for them correctly and make payment to PRS on your behalf. The second part would probably be much easier, which would just be making sure PRS sends those royalties to you.

Are the TuneSat detections all for US advertising airings? All with ASCAP? You could also try asking your publisher to chase after them for you, seeing as they’ll be wanting their % too.

Bear in mind that it can take a long, long time for you to be paid for airings in foreign countries.

I think it’s for submitting cues exclusively from adverts within ASCAP regions, am I getting that right?

No, with a Competitrack account you can look up a commercial and submit the Ad Code to your PRO for payment. You would have to be able to identify the particular commercial you believe is yours though. That’s only for U.S. composers I believe.

Around 90% are from the USA, so ASCAP/BMI. The rest are EU. This is where I may be showing my ignorance, as I do not have a publisher. I simply made some music, got it online through various NE libraries.

I’m so out of touch, and while my content has been used for quite a while, I have been TOTALLY neglective of the whole PRO side of things, and this is me just trying to unravel the mess!

Well, first of all, that’s pretty good news that you got broadcast placements through NE libraries while being neglectful! Your music must be good.

Having said that, I’m not entirely sure what you would do in this case. I think you could approach PRS with your data from TuneSat and explain. See what they recommend. If they don’t seem to know how to help, keep asking for different people until you get someone with experience in international royalties from production music. You could also try contacting ASCAP and explaining to them too.

Have you been paid anything from PRS for this advert yet? Or was it for a different TV show?

Well, first of all, that’s pretty good news that you got broadcast placements through NE libraries while being neglectful! Your music must be good.

Thanks, TBone, total ignorance on my part, basically I signed up to the PRS but didn’t submit any work, but had my work on NE libraries doing well but unfortunately had been dealing with some pretty awful depression and basically didn’t write or look at anything for a 5 year period. Good news is, I’m back baby!

Having said that, I’m not entirely sure what you would do in this case. I think you could approach PRS with your data from TuneSat and explain. See what they recommend. If they don’t seem to know how to help, keep asking for different people until you get someone with experience in international royalties from production music. You could also try contacting ASCAP and explaining to them too.

I contacted the PRS today and a very helpful advisor explained it all to me, and they have asked me to send in the spreadsheet with the TuneSat data for processing, so fingers crossed its going to get somewhere. They did say they cannot go back further than 3 years, but luckily for me 90% of the data is within 3 years.

Have you been paid anything from PRS for this advert yet? Or was it for a different TV show?

I was paid for one placement from a show back in 2018, even though I hadn’t submitted any work to the PRS, seems like it was the combination of honesty from ASCAP submission side plus some good due diligence from PRS.

Hopefully thats me sorted and finally on track with the whole PRO side of things.

The PRS are demanding I submit overseas claims for all of these, which will take forever (1800 different tracks). If that wasnt bad enough, you have to then match each one up to their database of cue sheets, the issue here is:

1. The data from TuneSat states the ‘show’ it was used on, however in reality the music was used on a broadcasters advert cuts. So it wasnt used on ‘Titanic’ rather it was used on by Fox to advertise other content inbetween the viewing of ‘Titanic’, for example.

2. There are no cue sheets, becasue A its a broadcasters commercial break and they havent submitted any cue sheets, and B they are are not in the PRS database.

Post a link to the mp3 clips you found in tunesat and someone here can help you determine if it was an advertising spot or a Promo for a show. I have a track running in very heavy rotation in Spain now as a promo.I contacted my USA publisher and copied the tunesat detections data and sent in an mp3 clip. The publisher reached out to the sub publisher in Spain and I should get some royalties eventually I was told. You should hope that this is an actual tv spot. 1800 detections of a TV spot should result in meaningful royalties so it should be worth you spending a few hours building your case and claiming what’s yours.